A stumpy Jewish immigrant from the London ghetto, Sam Gompers was shaped by the world of his father, who rolled rich cheroots and aromatic panatelas in cigar-making lofts on New York's Lower East Side... the rollers that young Gompers joined were educated men, their craft an ancient skill, their union like that of the medieval guilds, designed as much to protect their hard-won turf from less-skilled workers as to wrest concessions from their employers.